


I choose Vodka

by Ketlingr



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alcohol, Drinking, Drinking Games, Gen, Never Have I Ever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-04
Updated: 2017-05-04
Packaged: 2018-10-28 03:32:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10822857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ketlingr/pseuds/Ketlingr
Summary: The Avengers play "Never have I Ever".





	I choose Vodka

**Author's Note:**

  * For [petroltogo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/petroltogo/gifts).



> This is part of a weekly prompt-filling event I usually do on tumblr as tonystarkstoga, together with tonystarktogo (who is petroltogo on this site). This is a mix of my own ideas and tonystarktogo's related ask-series. I have a feeling that about half of the asks were mine, because I enjoyed the game so much, so I decided (with their permission) to write a little more about it. 
> 
> Since this has not been beta'd by anyone yet, please feel free to message me if you encounter any mistakes.

****“I choose Vodka.”

“Of course you do,” Tony smirks and hands Natasha the bottle. It’s a challenge, because she was the first to choose, and now they’re prompted to find similarly strong drinks, simply for reasons of fairness. Thor, who had at first been confused by the request to ‘choose his poison’, settles for some of the strong Asgardian stuff he has stored away. After a brief, unanimous vote, Steve is condemned to partake in Thor’s special mead, simply because nothing else would be strong enough to affect him, and everyone really wants to get him drunk. Tony and Clint choose to share an assortment of flavoured vodka - starting with strawberry, because it’s the sweetest, and Clint needs to ‘numb his tongue a bit’, he says. Bruce chooses absinthe - a brave choice, alcohol wise, but the safest, he explains.

 “It’s the only type of alcohol that really makes me calmer.” They all mimick his shrug. Nobody really expects Bruce to have to drink a lot, anyway. And a code green with a bunch of drunk Avengers around seems like a very bad idea. Not that any of this isn’t the setup for a really bad idea anyway.

 “Alright, who’ll start?” Tony asks, once they’ve all got their glasses and bottles stashed next to them. There are a few snacks on the table, and water in case anyone needs any. Natasha and him exchange challenging glances, but in the end it is Bruce who starts. It takes a few rounds to get everyone - Thor in particular - to grasp the rules, and even though they are simple enough there are still occasional discussions whether “this or that” counts enough to have to drink. Of course, things always count.

 “Never have I ever been caught having sex.” It’s a question everyone had expected to come up, although they probably would have pictured Tony to ask it. In fact, it is Steve who asks - and, to everyone’s surprise, they all drink, including Steve himself.

 “It is not a rare occurrence where I come from, but I had expected it to be less common on Midgard,” Thor states.

 “Gotta have fun somehow,” Clint chuckles. As it turns out, Clint has a lot of fun, in a lot of different ways, and he’s very willing to share all of them with the class. He is what Tony dubs The Shameless One™ in his head. If there’s any way to turn an innocent question sexual, Clint knows how to do it. Maybe that is his secret super power. And the archer doesn’t even wait for any of them to be properly drunk before starting with the freaky stuff. Not that Tony really minds, he can deal with freaky. It’s the personal stuff he likes to avoid, and while everyone’s focused on freaky, he has a good opportunity to do just that. Steve also has some effective ways of avoiding talking about his mysterious sex life (apparently, it exists after all, and Tony owes some people money). Creating diversions, starting discussions or simply focusing on the juicy details of other people’s stories usually distract everyone enough to leave Steve alone.

 While Tony tries to keep it light-hearted - another effort to avoid personal questions and experiences - Natasha is his exact opposite. Her questions are personal on purpose, they’re based on things she knows about people and only fall short of ‘mean’ because she knows not to take things too far. At least while she’s still sober. As the game moves on, her strategy changes from exposure to curiosity. She starts asking things she _doesn’t_ know.

 “Never have I ever been scared to ask someone out.”

 Her eyes are fixed on Tony and he knows it without looking up. He drinks, as do all the other guys. Everyone except Natasha herself, which is not much of a surprise except perhaps in Tony’s case. Because Tony doesn’t even need to ask, does he? It’s hard for the others to imagine there’s any woman - besides Natasha - he _hasn’t_ been in bed with yet. But Tony knows this isn’t about meaningless flings and his public playboy persona. Natasha doesn’t pry, but he catches the corner of her mouth twitching into a satisfied smirk. She’s on to something, and he doesn’t really like the thought of that. Luckily, the next few questions allow him to drink some more, and the strawberry vodka is gone more quickly than he had anticipated.

 “My turn,” Steve sits up straight and looks at them for a moment. He actually seems a little tipsy, which is promising and motivating all of them to keep the game going. “Never have I ever faked an orgasm.”

 Both Natasha and Tony immediately down their shots, no hesitation, no questions asked. Nobody is surprised, really. Neither are they when Steve himself doesn’t drink. After all, they’ve just gotten over the shock that he has sex at all. But then a feral grin spreads across Natasha’s face.

 “Nice try, Cap!” she calls him out with a mock frown. “What about that time at the fundraiser three weeks ago, when I had to save you from that nagging senator’s wife and we pretended to-”

 “I knew it!” Clint exclaims gleefully. Everyone chuckles at the memory. Steve drinks. When they all think the round is over and are about to move on to Clint’s question, the archer smirks, sends Natasha a salacious wink and drinks, too. Everyone is intrigued, his life expectancy has inexplicably plummeted into the negatives and nobody dares to ask. Thor simply shakes his head at the silliness of Midgardian customs.

 Clint opens his mouth, no doubt to start his turn, but then pauses and changes his mind. “Never have I ever been dumped by someone I really loved,” he says, and it is evident that he’s quite drunk. Tony expected him to handle his liquor a little better, but it is kind of endearing to see what a lightweight the archer is. Also, they know there’s a story behind this and while Thor, Tony and Bruce drink, Clint downs his own shot and begins talking.

 “So there was this girl… really we were still young-ish, kinda. I mean like, not super young, but… anyway, so I really loved her and we were having this thing and,” he drinks, even though they’re still on his turn. His story is long-winded and rambly, but still coherent enough to hold the team’s attention. “... and then she kissed him! Not just a little,” Clint frowns, and looks up into his friends’ empathetic faces.

 “Who was he?” Thor asks, filled with passion for Clint’s hurt pride.

 “Her brother,” Clint replies. Tony is the only one who lets out a laugh, before he manages to stifle it.

 “You should write books about this stuff,” Bruce suggests, his voice a little heavier than usual. Thor agrees, and in the following discussion and speculation Tony, who is not quite sober anymore himself, simply buys a small publishing house. That settles it. Out of the blue and still in the grips of Clint’s story, Thor starts singing a ballad in a deep, sonorous voice. Nobody is quite sure whether it is for his own lost love, Clint’s lost love or for Clint. By the looks of it, with the archer’s gaze hung up on Thor’s lips, Tony decides it’s the latter.

 “I ship them,” Natasha says and Tony laughs at her use of the phrase he had familiarised the team with only recently. She’s not the person he had expected to use it, least of all unironically. Not after the kinds of stories and images Tony showed her. Perhaps he had found her guilty pleasure after all. Although, looking back over at Clint and Thor, Tony finds himself agreeing with her, and the grin Clint throws her suggests that he does, too.

 It is during the next turn that Bruce reveals his own thoughts on the matter.

 “Never have I ever questioned my sexuality,” he says innocently.

 And why is it, Tony wonders, that all their questions are so sexual and increasingly personal when he has tried so hard every round to lead them away from this area? They always come back to it, and they’re on dangerous territory. He briefly considers lying, but he knows Natasha would notice. So he takes a quick sip, hoping that nobody saw, and avoids looking at anything besides the drink in his hand. Luckily - and surprisingly - for him, everyone else drinks, too. And nobody asks. It’s a strangely reassuring moment.

 Having picked up on Tony’s unease, Thor apparently decided it’s time to share his own embarrassing story.

 “Never have I ever had to excuse myself to urinate during sex.” He drinks immediately, as do Tony and Clint. But the attention remains with Thor, who begins detailing how mortified he was when he found out that the potion of virility Loki had procured for him only served to endlessly fill his bladder, distracting him thoroughly for hours, while his _brother_ made off with the woman Thor had been involved with. Thor’s story raises many questions, the answer to which don’t exactly make Thor look like the brightest candle in the lighter.

 In the end, it is Natasha who is once again intent on bringing Tony into the spotlight. He has been quiet and evasive, which is unlike him, and Tony is afraid her goal is to find out exactly why he prefers not to overshare for once.

 “Never have I ever been in love with a close friend,” she asks innocently. Like a cat, Tony thinks. Clint and Steve drink, but as their eyes, too, are on Tony, he figures there must have been a discussion about this he was left out of. He drinks, but makes no move to explain. Instead, he quickly moves on to his own turn.

 “Never have I ever had my feelings for someone outed by someone else,” he says, glaring at Natasha, because he wants her probing to stop. It’s not what the game is for and while it may be fun for everyone else, it’s not for him. Tony drinks, but Natasha very purposefully turns to look over at Bruce - who in turn looks at Tony, and drinks. Yeah right, there was that thing about that agent… Well, shit, Tony didn’t mean to tell her, he couldn’t have known it was a secret. People didn’t tell him secrets. Nonetheless he recognises the hypocrisy as what it is, and Natasha - hopefully - got the hint anyway.

 Well, even if she did, Clint obviously didn’t.

 “We’re gonna help you get your boy,” Clint says, emotions still high from Thor’s ballad.

 “It is a boy?” Thor asks, and looks more surprised than Tony would have expected. Maybe they _had_ missed him taking a sip earlier - and Tony had always taken great care to seem very… heterosexual to the general public. Before he can follow his thoughts further down any rabbit holes, Tony notices all eyes are on him.

 “I can neither confirm nor deny-” he starts, half jokingly, all his defensive attitudes and masks drawn up.

 “Bullshit, Stark,” Steve says so harshly everyone’s attention snaps right to him. “Sorry,” he mutters and shakes his little tumbler of honey coloured liquid in defence. “I’ve seen you with that guy from accounting before.”

 Natasha looks the most scandalised of them all, but Tony knows it’s only because Steve has left her in the dark about this. He never expected Ol’ Cap to be so discreet - up until now that is, when this statement has Tony’s face lighting up like Rudolph’s nose in a snowstorm. ‘You’re better than this’ Tony tells himself - and he is. He is better than blushing and stuttering, has been ever since his father had scolded him first for making out with the delivery boy and then for being meek about it. That man really didn’t know what he wanted sometimes. But now Tony feels very much reminded of that situation - and several like them. He should have no reason not to trust his team with this, and there really isn’t anything wrong with enjoying different kinds of bodies. After all, he wouldn’t mind if any of his team ‘came out’, either. But Tony isn’t ready to take pride in this, hasn’t quite come to terms with his feelings. And it is personal. Tony doesn’t do personal. Pepper is the most personal he has gotten with his team, and even that never went past her presence and their knowledge of the relationship in general. Well, and later the spectacular crashing and burning of said relationship, but even that Tony managed to confine mostly to the “hey guys, relationship over” part. The crashing and burning part had always been his own to deal with.

 “It’s not going to work,” Tony states blindly, giving no further context. His mind is too busy reeling and backing away from everything and everyone to even think about what is coming out of his mouth. “Not happening. Next. Cap, your turn.” Say something to make me drink, Tony begs silently. By the set of Steve shoulders and jaw, Tony realises he will make him drink. But he won’t change the topic. He has this ‘it’s for your own good’ look on his face that Tony absolutely _hates._

 “Never have I ever been in love with my best friend.” It’s a low blow and Tony is about to get up and quit this whole stupid game - when Steve and Thor both drink. With a bitter grimace, Tony drinks, too. Fine. They can play like that. He’s not gonna say another word. Clint jumps in before he has to.

 “Never have I ever had a sex dream about a friend and then couldn’t stop thinking about it.” And they all drink, and there are a few smirks and chuckles as they remember their respective crushes and dreams, and Tony feels a little less tense and mortified.

 “Natasha or Coulson?” Steve asks Clint teasingly, glad that for once he has a chance to not immediately be the target of all the sexual questions. It’s when Natasha catches their attention with a shake of her head, mouthing “both” that even Tony has to smile. Bruce skips his turn to use the restroom, and just when Tony thinks the coast is clear and they moved away from personal topics and things that make him uncomfortable, it’s Thor’s turn. Of course, the big oaf couldn’t possibly know how unexpectedly squirmy Tony is about the subject he brings up.

 “Never have I ever liked being blindfolded or restrained during sex.” To the Asgardian prince, it’s a great confession of vulnerability when he drinks. To Tony, it’s worse, because he’s so conflicted about it. He drinks, reluctantly. But it’s not his hesitance that makes him choke on his shot halfway. It’s Natasha leaning forward and saying, “I bet you look really pretty all tied up.”

 He can’t tell if she’s teasing or truly thinking aboutit, but it takes him entirely off guard. The tension of surprise quickly dissolves into laughter - but not laughter at Tony, just friendly humour, and, much to Tony’s renewed mortification, assent. Clint begins suggesting black, soft ropes and he and Thor go into detail about bondage practices. Tony had never expected to feel like such a prude among his friends, but the day has come. There haven’t been many people Tony had trusted enough to actually try the whole… bondage thing, so his experience, beyond what he’s read and looked at, is very limited. The most he has been able to try was a blindfold with Pepper, and she felt too awkward about it to keep the mood going.

 Questions like these line up for a while, because they all enjoy seeing Tony squirm instead of Steve. It’s not that Tony doesn’t like to talk about sex. Just… when it’s about himself, about what he enjoys, they always manage to make him blush like a teenager. Whatever he does with his partners is usually public knowledge to some extent, because most of the one night stands he has can’t keep their mouth shut. Which is precisely why they don’t know a thing about his kinks and fantasies. Keeping those to himself has always been much easier - at least so he thought. His team seems to be able to read him far too easily, or maybe he just has too many kinks. Or both.

 Eventually even the Avengers must tire of the endless teasing and sexual questions, and so they move on to other things. Bruce, it turns out, abuses the rules of the game to figure out who is behind some of the pranks they like to play on each other (because days can get boring and they are all too creative for their own good).

 “Never have I ever told JARVIS to suddenly turn the showers cold on my teammates,” Bruce asks, pointedly looking at Tony. To his and everyone else’s surprise, Tony blinks back at him in honest innocence, not touching his drink. A long moment of silence follows before Steve tries - and fails - to sneakily take a shot. Tony chuckles - whatever prank war is going on, if they involve JARVIS the team apparently knows to leave Tony out of it. A wise, healthy decision. When it’s Tony’s turn again, he tries to figure something out for himself, for once. If everyone else can use the game to gather information, so can he.

 “Never have I ever had long conversations with an inanimate object.” Of course he drinks. He talks to his bots all the time, and sometimes even to things he knows don’t have the sensors to hear him, or the programming to react to him. Like screwdrivers falling off worktables. Or coffee mugs being empty. It can’t be all that unusual, can it?

 Everyone else drinks, too, and Tony is more relieved than he would like to admit. On a second thought, he’s not even really surprised that Clint took a shot. He has an intimate relationship with the coffee machine that even Tony couldn’t dream of having. And Steve, who has had quite a few conversations with various technological devices before realising that JARVIS does not have access to any of them. Tony, of course, had made sure JARVIS wasn’t going to tell him that unless Steve asked him directly.

 Natasha admits to sharing stories with a stone. She’s a little too quiet, a bit too distant, and Tony wonders if this is about a pet stone or a gravestone. Bruce likes to talk to all kinds of equations and substances, until they ‘tell him their secrets’, which Tony finds endearing. And Thor treats his hammer like a person, which immediately launches all of them into a discussion of whether a magical item counts as inanimate - Tony thinks it doesn’t - and whether Mjolnir’s ability to judge someone’s worthiness has any impact on the outcome of that discussion.

 “I’ve heard you talk to your hammer in the bathroom,” Steve blurts out after the argument has dragged on for a while. Tony snorts, which makes the others laugh, too. “With how long you take in there, maybe your secret is your hair? You think Mjolnir would judge you unworthy if your hair was less shiny?”

 “I do not take longer than Stark,” Thor protests.

 “That’s a lie. Also, unlike you, I shave.”

 “Well, let’s see,” Steve intervenes, “never have I ever spent more time in the bathroom admiring myself than actually getting ready.” Steve himself drinks, and they can all imagine why. Even after all this time, it must still be odd sometimes to try and find your skinny little self behind a mountain of serum-formed muscles. Natasha also drinks, and with her various disguises that, too, is understandable. Sometimes it must be hard for her to recognise the person staring back.

 Nobody is surprised when Tony drinks, either, because for all his insecurities, he’s still Tony Stark, and they’d all do a whole lot more than looking if they were him for a day. That, at least, is what Tony reads in Clint’s shrug and facial expression. Bruce and Clint don’t drink, but - after some hesitation and muttering something unintelligible - Thor takes a big sip of his mead.

 “I represent my people,” he says in his defence, but adds, “and I need to know my good angles for your press people.” Sharing a glance, Bruce and Clint silently agree to also take a shot, because they’ve all done this at one point or another, practising their moves and poses.

 “Everyone has a vain day once in a while,” Bruce say when he catches the look Tony shoots him.

 When Tony and Clint start another bottle, it is already late enough to be early again. They’re all rather wasted by now, and Bruce has left them a while ago to lie down. Tony has taken off his shoes and is lounging in his arm chair, folded up like a cat. It looks both cozy and incredibly uncomfortable at the same time. Natasha is leaning against Clint, who’s toying with a bottle cap, Thor has placed his hammer in his lap and is sitting with both arms wrapped around it, while Steve is sitting cross-legged next to Natasha, occasionally sighing heavily. It’s been a few decades since he has felt this drunk and he is quite glad he will likely be the only one of them waking up without a hangover tomorrow. Hopefully. Dear gods, hopefully.

 “Never have I ever,” Thor starts, then lets out whimper that makes everyone look up. “ever let my dinner walk because it was too cute,” he finishes, confessing more than asking. He’s teary-eyed, takes a big drink himself and sniffles, “It was my first hunt!” While Clint reaches over to pat Thor’s shoulder, Tony takes advantage of the others’ distraction to knock his own glass back. Of course Natasha sees him. There’s no escaping her, not even when she’s drunk and relaxed.

 “Those cupcakes didn’t walk away, Tony, they were carried away.”

 “I still let them go. Because they were too adorable to eat, it totally counts. And really, it wasn’t my fault.”

 “They were Iron Man tsumtsums,” Clint comes to his defence, and Thor agrees that he would have felt bad for eating tiny Tony faces. Everyone nods, and for a moment, they lull into the comforting warmth of intoxication. Then, they startle.

 “Never have I ever,” comes JARVIS’ voice from the ceiling, “asked an A.I. to do simple calculations for me.”

 The group exchanges glances. They all drink. And they all agree it’s time to go to bed.


End file.
